Voiceover:
00.00 This is The Beat, a podcast series that keeps you in the know about the latest
community policing topics facing our nation.
Toni Morgan:
00.08 Hello and welcome. My name is Toni Morgan, and on behalf of the COPS Office,
I would like to introduce you to Annette Santella, project manager for Cops & Kids at the
Fred Rogers Company, and Lieutenant Richard Mullen from the Allegheny County
Pennsylvania Police Department. They are here to talk with us today about connecting
cops and kids through the One-on-One project. Richard, what is One-on-One:
Connecting Cops & Kids?
Richard Mullen:
0.37 Toni, Connecting Cops & Kids, One-on-One, is a four-part video-based training
series that’s designed to examine the way that law enforcement officers can increase
their effectiveness in dealing with children they encounter in their daily duties. It deals a
lot with children and teenagers. It’s designed to raise consciousness of how intricate
children are to police work. It’s designed, the training is designed to provoke discussion
and raise officers’ awareness of police as they go about their daily duties. It has a
tremendous—it’s designed as well to allow officers to use their authority to assist
families that are at risk, as well as children that are at risk.
In sum, The training is delivered by using an experienced police officer as well as a child
development specialist. The child development specialist is there to assist in helping
officers understand how children grow, how they change as they get older, and how, as
they get older, their views on police officers change. By being able to give officers this
information, the hope is to make them more effective in dealing with children as they
come about them in their daily duties. The video segments that are included in the
training are actual film footage of ride-alongs with police dealing with children in a
variety of situations, from just casual encounters on the streets through very intense
conflict calls on the streets as well.
The hope of the training and also discussion that comes out of the training programs as
they’re being delivered is to allow officers to model ways that they can use this in their
daily work in dealing with police. Some of the goals that we tried to attempt to achieve
through the training is to raise an officer’s awareness of children and how central they
are to their work. To provide the modeling effects, as I already said, to where they have
some basis to draw on as they come across situations where they deal with police. To
provide information on how children grow and how they change, and how their
perception then of police changes as they get older. The hope is to describe ways that
police can use their authority to help children and families that are at risk.
A major part of the training is to identify partners that can assist the police. And that’s—
the second half of the training, the afternoon half, involves us actually bringing in
community partners and establishing dialogues; if there is a working relationship there,
to see how well it’s working, see if it can be improved. If there isn’t, to look at possible
solutions that police can use through community partners as well. And then the hope is
to be able to build model collaboratives from that as well.
Morgan:
03.35 So, Annette, can you describe the National Rollout Program, as well as the
funding source, the purpose, goals, agencies, and partnership for the grant? And where
and how sites have been selected so far?
Annette Santella:
03.52 The program is funded by the Department of Justice COPS Office. It provides the
Pittsburgh-based Fred Rogers Company an opportunity to scale up the One-on-One:
Connecting Cops & Kids training program. We plan to hold approximately 20 to 25
daylong training sessions for the law enforcement officers across the country in the next
several months.
Fred Rogers Company has partnered with the Institute for Youth Education and Families
at the National League of Cities in order to recruit applicants. The National League of
Cities posted the RFP—the request for proposal—on their site, and applicants submitted
them by the end of March 2011. NLC’s extensive membership base and communications
network of mayors, police chiefs, and other stakeholders provided a wide platform for
recruitment. Applications were then carefully screened, and selection of host sites was
based on a wide range of criteria. Geographically, so far, we have applicants and
selected host sites, we’re calling them host sites, that span California, Washington state,
Arizona, Colorado, Texas, Tennessee, Georgia, Ohio, Alabama, and that’s just the
beginning of them.
Morgan:
05.25 So, Richard, if the goal of the program is for officers to increase their
effectiveness when interacting with children, are you anticipating other positive impacts
on community policing efforts as a result of training?
Mullen:
05.41 Absolutely. One-on-One embraces the very basic tenets of community policing.
It’s designed to build long-term relationships within the community that the officer
serves in and to establish relationships between the children and the teenagers of that
community, along with their families, the police agency—both individual officers and
the department, hopefully—and the community partners that can be of assistance to
these children and their families. What police officers need to realize, that the children
that they are dealing with today will be the adults of the community that they are still
going to be serving in throughout their career. So it’s very important to try to build these
relationships early, because building them can have a positive impact. And what I
anticipate coming from the concepts that are presented in One-on-One training is a
continuance of these positive relationships between the police and the children that they
deal with, continuing that through as these children become the adults within the
community where these officers serve.
Morgan:
06.40 Great. And Annette, can you talk about where you’ve been and what you’ve
learned so far in this rollout process?
Santella:
06.46 One, I want to back up for a minute and say that, specific to this rollout process,
we hope that there are a few outcomes, and one is an opportunity for the host sites to
adopt and institutionalize the Cops & Kids training program. Another is to expand our
trainer base so that there are more individuals across the country who are qualified and
interested in delivering the One-on-One: Cops & Kids training to even more people. And
then third is an increased opportunity to do what Rich just said, and that is to have
police departments build stronger collaborative relationships with social service
agencies.
Now where we’ve been, the Cops & Kids was originally released in 2004. In 2005 and
2006, it was piloted in and around the Pittsburgh area. In 2008 and 2009, Department of
Justice—Juvenile Justice demonstration programs, we had funding to spread it through
southwestern Pennsylvania. So by the time 2010 came, we had reached 225 officers.
Now this grant, this rollout grant, gives us an opportunity to go across the nation. So far,
in this grant, we’ve been to Nashville and to Youngstown, Ohio. And we’re continuing to
schedule.
Morgan:
08.19 Great. So if someone wanted to learn more, who should they contact?
Mullen:
08.25 They can contact Annette directly; it’d be Annette Santella. Her number is 412-
650-3108, or by email at santella@fredrogers.org or directly to the Cops & Kids website,
which is www.copskids.org.
Voiceover:
08.54 The Beat was brought to you by the United States Department of Justice COPS
Office. The COPS Office helps to keep our nation’s communities safe by giving grants to
law enforcement agencies, developing community policing publications, developing
partnerships and solving problems.